DECstation porters unite !

Hi,
due to the overwhelming amount of requests regardings the DECstation port
during the last few weeks ;-), we should do something to get the port further
along.
I will set up a mirror site of Paul's DECstation information pages on Monday
and would like to ask all people who have DECstation patches to upload the
patches to ftp://ftp.math.uni-siegen.de in /incoming.
We should try to find out what the biggest problems in the current
state of the port are. Areas that IMHO need work are:
- Interrupt handling
- MMU setup and handling
- of course, device drivers:
o Ethernet (Lance 7990) - should be able to derived from the Sparc port,
major difference is that the Lance has a separate memory area in at
least the DS[23]100 and 5000/200 and isn't able to do DMA.
o SCSI in DS[23]100 - the DEC SII chipset. Documented in the DS3100
functional specs
o SCSI in almost (?) all other DECstations - NCR53C94. Is this chip
documented ?
o Console drivers (I got some of these working with the DZ11) - a DZ11
compatible UART in DS[23]100 and 5000/200, a Zilog 8530 in at least the
Personal DECstations and the DS5000/1xx.
Support for the DS[23]100 frame buffer also exists.
We should also examine the differences between the various REX- and
non-REX firmware versions in the various DECstations.
o TurboChannel support - probing for cards etc. and support for the most
important TC options - PMAG-[AB]* graphics adapters, ethernet and SCSI
controllers (which are simply TC versions of the Lance and NCR53C94).
Well, we also have a nice 24-bit i860-accelerated graphics board here ;-)
[So you say that's almost everything - hmmm, maybe you're right ;-)]
Probably it is also a good idea to make a list of the hardware that is
available for testing kernels.
I have a DS2100, a 5000/25, a 5000/120 and a 5000/200 and can get
access to 5000/33's, 3100's and 5000/240's at University.
I would personally also like to support the first-generation TurboChannel
AXP machines (3000/[34567]00) as the Alpha developers don't seem to be
interested in these ... but I still don't have such a machine :-(.
regards,
Michael Engel (engel@unix-ag.uni-siegen.de)